Using PowerMock to mock/stub static void method calls in JUnit.

Sometimes you do come across snippets of code that prove to be tricky while writing their JUnit tests. One such scenario is the case of static void call, though some people would argue to extract the static void call into a separate method but that is old-school. PowerMock junit runner lets you even mock static void and normal static calls. Let us take a look at both approaches the old one and the new one which uses PowerMock.

In the above code snippet we can see that the static void call is extracted out in a separated method, now while writing the JUnit test for MyAction java class we can have anonymous sub-class which overrides the staticCall() method with it’s own implementation to avoid calling this method. Below code snippet elucidates the overriding

In the above snippet we can see that I have overridden the staticCall() method, now while executing the Junit test the super-class method containing the static call is never invoked and hence our purpose is solved of avoiding the static call. But the reason I don’t consider this approach clean is that our code should not be changed in order to make our Junit tests easier to write. Junit test should test existing running code without the need of modifying the code to meet JUnit’s need.

In the above code we have used PowerMock’s spy feature to partially mock the object, once you partial mock the object you have to stub the behavior i.e. prepare some canned calls. Here the PowerMock’s ability lies in the below three statements

First we partially mock the MyStatic Class, then in the second line the doNothing() method is used to specify that the A static method call by the class MyStatic should result in doing nothing. Now since the object is partially mocked thus we also need to specify the method whose invocation is canned by doNothing() method, we do this in the 3rd statement MyStatic.staticMethod() , thus now it’s more of record-playback pattern wherein we have initially recorded the doNothing() behavior and then played the MyStatic.staticMethod().

Conclusion The PowerMock approach is best possible solution i could find for mocking static calls without changing actual code, if you have any other tricks up your sleeve do share them!